Rodstrom Wanted Voters To Decide

You recently printed a second article regarding County Commissioner John Rodstrom being the only dissenting vote in the 1995 anti-discrimination law and Robin Bodiford's request for an apology.

If the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is going to reference that time, it would be only fair to print the facts at the same time, which come from the minutes of the Broward County Commissioners, and they are as follows: Ms. Bodiford took advantage of a technical issue when the commissioners adopted a human rights ordinance listing specifics, which at that point did not include sexual orientation. She approached the commissioners with a twofold plan requesting they add sexual orientation immediately by statute and that she and her group were also proposing to put it before the voters for an amendment to our charter in that it, too, did not have sexual orientation because the voters had previously voted no on that issue, as the voters had always voted on all human rights items that are listed in the charter.

It was after Ms. Bodiford got the approval of the commissioners that her group withdrew its forward movement to get the voters' approval of the charter. It was the commissioners' opinion that if put before the people again, there would be a good chance it would not pass again.

Even Lori Parrish, in the minutes, stated that if we let the people vote, they will vote against it. Mr. Rodstrom stood his ground because he believed the people should have voted on this issue as they had done on all the other issues. In essence, as the minutes would reveal, the commissioners' actions would prevent the people from ever speaking on this issue again. In essence, by those six votes, the will of the people of Broward County, since they had at that point already voted no on the issue, was overridden by those six commissioners. Ms. Bodiford should be apologizing to all the voters in Broward County for using a technical maneuver to override the voting rights of the people. That is why our charter does not have sexual orientation because it reflects the people's vote but the human rights ordinance represents the vote of six commissioners.